Social media marketing has become, and will remain to be, vitally important to companies from many industries.  In a recent post by social media marketing blog Convince & Convert, they analyze exactly how effective “fan pages” on Facebook are.

Convince & Convert reports that posts to users’ “fan pages” can reach anywhere between 2% and 47% of the fans subscribed to the page.  That is quite the difference.  It really just goes to show you that you really don’t know how effective or worthwhile a fan page Facebook post will be.  Of course, there are potential flaws in the research.  However, I think that as a whole Convince & Convert provides us with a fair estimated range.  Facebook posts will never reach anywhere close to 100% of the fans because not everyone actively checks or logs into Facebook every day.

I think that what we can take from this external blog posting is that social media marketing is important, but it is not an exact science.  Even if a company has one million Twitter followers, nowhere close to every one of those followers will see the tweet.  Social media posting are all about posting at the right time, so you have to take into account various factors (age, geographic location) of your fans/followers.

For more information, check out this YouTube video from “Entrepreneur On Fire” as they interview Jay Baer of the blog Convince & Convert.

I definitely learned something today.  Unethical marketers are now targeting text message forms of contest entry to target unknowing individuals.  As classmate Katherine Caverly points out, these marketers send out text messages to individuals regarding a product or service that is completely unrelated to the contest that they entered.

This form of marketing is totally unacceptable and wrong.  People should not be faced with sky high cell phone bills for receiving unwanted text messages.  Something legally needs to be done about this “bait and switch” form of marketing.  As Katherine also points out, this form of marketing goes directly against Dr. Silver’s ethical marketing rubric.

I also believe that this is wrong because these marketers can take advantage of people that are not fully aware of the charges that are going to be applied to their phone bill after they enter these contests.  After all, they probably would not even enter these contests if they knew about these charges beforehand.

Aston Martin has successfully branded itself over the last fifty years, or so, to the extent that whenever most people think about an Aston Martin luxury sports car, they automatically think about James Bond.  Also, whenever people have a picture in their mind of James Bond, they think of him driving an Aston Martin.  It is as if you can’t have one without the other.  And is there really a better way to promote your prestige product (in this case a car) better than associating it with the playboy, super spy, badass James Bond character?

Aston Martin’s market is mainly “classy” men, who still want the sports car taste to their daily ride.  Well, I think that it goes without saying that there isn’t a better individual to make male Aston Martin drivers imagine themselves being than James Bond.  What more can a guy ask for other than exotic women, state of the art gadgets, and a “don’t mess with me” mentality?

I have to admit, being a James Bond fanatic (and I mean about as big of a fanatic as you can get) this branding has worked on me, because the Aston Martin has become my dream car due to this James Bond association.  But what is quite unique about the Aston Martin brand, is that you can still have that Rolls Royce feel of a luxurious, classy vehicle; but still get that sports car appearance.  For me, there really isn’t a better cross for cars of sports and luxury.  For me personally, it’s definitely worth the extra money to have that James Bond association with your car.  Prestige products can easily capture customers by using a similar association model that Aston Martin uses, as Aston Martin has shown how highly effective that it can be.

And oh, the roar of that engine in the commercial is so sexy.